I’m back with a few more gems from the RMFW Colorado Gold conference. You can read Part I, with brief notes from the craft workshops I attended, here. Today is all about the publishing industry.

From “Everything You Wanted to Know About Publishing (Now’s Your Time to Ask),” with Peter Senftleben: Self-published authors looking to break into traditional publishing really need to have sold around 20,000 copies. That being said, platform isn’t all that important for fiction writers just starting out. That can be built after a book is under contract. Also, even large publishers are looking to digital-only releases, especially with new authors, to build an audience before moving to print.

From “Editor/Agent Panel,” with Lucienne Diver, Kerri Buckley, Shannon Hassan, and Raelene Gorlinsky: Writing momentum expectations vary a lot by genre. Romance readers often expect three or more books per year from their authors. Fantasy and science fiction readers might be content with one book a year. From a career-management perspective, if you can’t write more than one book a year, you shouldn’t be writing in more than one genre.

From “Editor/Agent Panel,” with Margaret Bail, Elizabeth Copps, Susan Brower, and Jessica Renheim: Jessica Renheim, the only editor on this panel, said, “I work for a lot of great authors.” I wrote it down, because I thought that “for” was telling, as a lot of authors, especially early on, feel like they’re working for agents and editors. The agents pointed that they aren’t just there to negotiate contracts, either. Their job is to help authors with general career management.

I have two more sessions that I haven’t covered in these brief notes, but I think both of those are worthy of their own dedicated posts, so stay tuned!

Like this:

My people are the ones whose smartphones live in their hands, not their pockets. My people know usernames better than real names. My people have an innate sense of what will fit into 140 characters. My people put jokes in hashtags, because, somehow, they’re funnier that way. My people are the Twitter people.

At the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers conference this past weekend, I met a lot of my people. As is often the case, I also met a lot more people who spoke that oh-so-familiar refrain: I just don’t get Twitter.

For those of you in the latter category, here’s the secret you don’t know. The people on Facebook are your mom and your best friend from high school and your great-aunt Mary and your break buddy from three jobs ago. The people on Twitter are your tribe.

If you’re not on Twitter already, a conference is actually a great time to start. It’s a ready-made community to ease you into the platform. Over the weekend, I jotted down some notes about how to get the most out of Twitter during a writing conference. Here are seven tips for conference attendees, and, as a bonus, four more for organizers and presenters.

Tips for Attendees

Use the conference tag. Most conferences have one official hashtag to help attendees find each other and follow along. Put it at the end of every conference-related tweet you post, and search for it to find other conference-goers. (The hashtag for this year’s RMFW Colorado Gold conference was #RMFW2014.)

Retweet and follow other attendees. As soon as you know the conference hashtag, start searching for it. Some users will begin using the tag early as they plan and prepare for the actual event. That’s a great time to begin following your fellow attendees and getting to know them, even before the conference starts. If someone posts something that resonates with you or that you think your followers will enjoy, retweet it. Continue following and retweeting other attendees once the conference gets underway. They will notice and appreciate it.

Put your Twitter username on your badge. If it’s not on there already, write your Twitter username clearly on your badge. It will help others find and recognize you.

Find the quotable quotes. When you’re in workshops or keynotes, listen for the speakers’ most direct, concise statements. If the quotes are funny or surprising, all the better. You’ll learn to recognize the gems that fit within the 140-character limit. Those are what you should be tweeting.

Attribute speakers. When you quote someone, make sure you include their name or Twitter username in your quote. Give credit where credit is due.

Tweet things that will be useful to people outside the conference. Twitter is great for getting to know people within a conference, but the majority of your followers probably aren’t fellow attendees. Try to keep your tweets interesting and informative, even for people who aren’t at the event with you. It’s better to share a nugget of wisdom from a great presenter than to tweet something like, “Super-awesome talk in the Cottonwood Room. Check it out!”

Turn off your ringer. This is a given, right? No one wants to hear your key clicks or the notification bings from your retweets.

Tips for Organizers and Presenters

Promote the conference hashtag. Put your conference hashtag on your website before the event. Put it on the front of your on-site booklets. Put it on a sign at registration. Don’t leave attendees confused about what hashtag to use. Help us help you promote.

Print usernames on badges by default. Ask for Twitter info during registration and print usernames on badges. Twitter is the best tool out there right now for real-time discussion and interaction, so make it easy for us to use it!

Offer your username at the start of presentations. When Twitter users share quotes from your workshops or speeches, they’re promoting you. Make sure you get the full benefit of that by providing your username up front. It’ll make it easier for you to look afterward to see what resonated with attendees. It’ll also make it easier for non-attendees to find out more about you.

Assume smartphone users are engaged, not bored. Once upon a time, if people were fiddling with their phones during your speech, it meant they weren’t interested in what you were saying. That’s not true anymore. Sure, the person typing on their phone in the back row might be texting their friend about lunch, but it’s more likely they’re your biggest promoter. Don’t be offended when the phones come out during your presentation. At RMFW this weekend, I almost invariably saw the mad typing begin only after the most wonderful of lines.

When I set foot in the Westin hotel on Friday, I’d met exactly one person there previously, and I’d spoken to her for a grand total of about ten minutes. I knew a few other attendees from Twitter but, for the most part, I was completely on my own. I’m a gamer who regularly attends gaming conventions, so I’m not unfamiliar with crowded conference center hallways filled with people I don’t know. I’m also not shy, so I’m perfectly okay with holding out my hand and introducing myself to whatever stranger is standing next to me.

But (and this is a big but), I’m also an introvert.

I can offer a smile and a handshake, but that gesture costs me something each time I do it. It’s an emotional drain, a pull of power from my battery, a draw from whatever internal well sustains me over the course of a day of human interaction.

Usually, when I go to a gaming convention—or any social event with a lot of strangers, really—I have a safety net. Not all interactions cost the same amount. There are some people I know so well that being with them doesn’t cost me anything at all. Spending time with them is like stopping at base in a game of tag. It’s a chance to feel safe while I catch my breath. It’s not that the running around part of tag isn’t fun. It’s just nice to know that going back to base is an option.

RMFW was organized in a way that made meeting people easy. Everyone I spoke to was friendly and kind. I’m glad I went. But I had no “base” at RMFW, and it was so much harder than I expected.

I’ve heard that some yoga practitioners find themselves crying spontaneously in the middle of a practice. No rhyme or reason to it, some internal wall just comes down and emotions flood out. Maybe that’s why I felt tears threatening as I walked out of the hotel yesterday afternoon. I wasn’t sad the conference was over or upset about the way it had gone. I simply had no walls left to hold anything in. The crying weren’t a good thing or a bad thing, it just was, and once it passed, I was completely emptied out.

I think it will be a few days before I’m filled up again, before I can “go forth and write.” That’s okay. Every internal resource I spent, I gained back in another form. In knowledge. In inspiration. In community. In Starwood Preferred Guest points.

Like this:

The real answer, of course, is I have no idea, but Colorado Gold starts tomorrow, so I’m figuring it out.

Here’s what’s in my bag:

Clothes, shoes, and toiletries. Dress code is business casual, so I have slacks and skirts, along with something to work out in, because I always have the best of intentions. I’m bringing heels and flats and running shoes. I have a whole suitcase to myself, so ALL THE SHOES.

Business cards. I love my new cards, which have both my personal info and my shop URL. If I’m going to be following Susan Spann’s Twitter challenge of meeting and remembering at least three new people a day, I’m going to need them.

A notebook and pens. I always have a notebook and pens, but these, specifically, are for note-taking during conference sessions.

The first chapter of my novel, printed out. I didn’t bring the whole novel, except on my laptop, but I thought it might be handy to have Chapter 1 in hard copy.

Books. Sure, it’s going to be a full weekend, but books.

My annotated schedule and session handouts. No wifi in the conference center and many of the sessions have digital-only handouts.

Healthy snacks. I started getting shipments from graze.com last week and they come in handy, single-serving packets, perfect for afternoon pick-me-ups.

Laptop. I’m kind of using it right now, but I’ll bring it.

Water bottle. Here in Colorado, we carry water bottles everywhere. It’s a thing.

Phone and earbuds. Always.

So…what have I forgotten? (Or just stay tuned next week for the inevitable “What I Wished I’d Packed For a Writers’ Conference.”)